This document describes the approach to engaging stakeholders in generating and translating systems knowledge into decision-making. The approach is a combination of decision analysis, stakeholder identification and stakeholder analysis approaches.
We applied our approach in the case of Dien Bien, Vietnam. We generated scientific evidence on agro-climate services (ACS) scaling. We further suggest how to engage stakeholders in integrating scientific evidence into the socio-economic development planning in Dien Bien.
The full procedure for integrating stakeholder engagement and stakeholder analysis with the decision analysis approach is available in the Repository: Stakeholder-Decision-Analysis-ACS.
We combined decision analysis, stakeholder identification and stakeholder analysis approaches. We detailed methodological steps in the Figure below
Stakeholder engagement approach in agro-climate service planning. The methodological steps are further developed based on the decision analysis procedure used in the study by (Luu et al. 2022).
We defined a stakeholder as “any individual or group who has an interest in a decision or who can affect or is affected by a decision”.
This definition, combined with various tools/techniques (see below Figure) helped us to identify the key stakeholders of the decisions to invest in scaling ACS.
Figure: Methods and tools/techniques used to identify stakeholders of the potential decisions to invest in agro-climate services in Dien Bien District, Vietnam. Adapted from (Reed et al. 2009)
List of targeted stakeholders contains the list of key stakeholders for potential engagement in knowledge generation and translation, aiming to influence agro-climate service investment decision-making.
Among those stakeholders, we used another set of criteria (i.e. based on stakeholders’ experience, availability, expertise and gender) to identify potential experts who would be joining in generating ACS knowledge.
For this purpose, we grouped stakeholders based on their time availability and experience into core experts and resource persons. Together with CVN’s technical working group, we evaluated the availability and expertise of each key stakeholder by scoring them on a scale from 0 to 5 for these traits. The score helped to select experts based on the following criteria.
We considered the gender of stakeholders to support the constitution of a gender-balanced team of experts. Furthermore, we mapped out the expertise (i.e. knowledge and skills related to ACS) of stakeholders to help us identify experts with representative expertise across the value chain.
We used the ggplot2 package (Wickham et al. 2022) in R (R Core Team 2020) to analyze and visualize stakeholders’ attributes.
Figure: Categorization of stakeholders to identify potential core experts and resource persons
Download
the R code for expert identification in section
1. Plot stakeholder attributes: experience, availability, gender and expertise to identify experts
We used a dataset collected by (Luu, Whitney, and Luedeling 2022) and aggregated cost-benefit for stakeholders who, according to the design, are expected to engage directly or be directly affected by the implementation of ACS
Figure: Categorization of stakeholders to identify potential core experts and resource persons
A summary of individual Net Present Value results for each stakeholder is available in the supporting material Supplementary Material 1.
An input table used for the analysis is available in the supporting document at Input table for cost-benefit analysis.
Download the R code for stakeholder cost benefit analysis.
We conducted four three group discussions (FGDs) with the expert team in two years (i.e. 2019 and 2020) to map out the perceived attributes of stakeholders. Those attributes included interest, influence and relevance attitudes. We categorized stakeholders in a four-dimension matrix using the ggplot2 package (Wickham et al. 2022) in R (R Core Team 2020).
Below Figure is the result of the stakeholder analysis for 2019
Figure: Perceived interest, influence, relevance and attitude of stakeholders n the decision to scale agro-climate services in Dien Bien District, Vietnam. Results were captured through expert consultation in 2019
Below Figure is the result of the stakeholder analysis for 2020
Figure: Perceived interest, influence, relevance and attitude of stakeholders in the decision to scale agro-climate services in Dien Bien District, Vietnam. Results were captured through expert consultation in 2020
We used these analyses to initiate recommendations for engaging these stakeholders in the relevant roles in the ACS budgeting and decision-making processes.
Download the R
code for stakeholder analysis in
Section 2. Stakeholder power and interest analysis in 2019
and
Section 3. Stakeholder power and interest analysis in 2020.
Experts relied on the identified attributes of stakeholders and integrated such understanding into the administrative and nested budget system to suggest the considerations to engage stakeholders specifically in Dien Bien socio-economic development planning processes.
Figure: Administrative structure and nested budget system in Vietnam. Adapted from (Asian Development Bank 2017) and (Strauch, Yann, and Balanowsk 2018)
Detailed suggestions for the pathways to engage stakeholders are available in the Supplementary Material 2
Figure: Suggestions for the pathways to engage stakeholders
The input table stakeholder.csv contains variables used
in the stakeholder analysis. The table includes the names and other
attributes of stakeholders. Download the stakeholder
input table.
Supplementary Material 1: Summary of individual Net Present Value results for each stakeholder
Supplementary Material 2: Suggested pathways to integrate ACS in the SEDP and roles of institutional stakeholders
We acknowledge the valuable support from CARE in Vietnam and Dien Bien Centre of Community Development. We sincerely thank the Schlumberger Foundation for providing a scholarship for the main author through the Faculty for the Future Program. The views expressed in this research are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of CARE in Vietnam, Dien Bien Centre of Community Development or the Schlumberger Foundation.